


don't want to be here anymore

by Neffectual



Series: one step forward, two steps back [9]
Category: BritWres, Progress Wrestling
Genre: Chronic Pain, Depression, Gen, Introspection, post SSS16 '18
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-04 10:42:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14591307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neffectual/pseuds/Neffectual
Summary: After Ospreay calls him out, Jimmy has to make a decision. Is he content with fading away - or does he want to go out in a blaze of someone else's pain?





	don't want to be here anymore

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for SSS16 2018.
> 
> Written to, and title from, "I Don't Want To Be Here Anymore" by Rise Against.

When the booking’s announced, his answer’s a one-shouldered shrug, as much energy as they’re putting in is all he’s prepared to give back as a response – one shoulder shifts, his face doesn’t change, and his gaze barely lifts from his phone. He’s done, and he knows it. If they all think he can’t hear them say it, they’re fucking stupid; he’s broken, not fucking deaf, after all. And broken’s the best way he can describe himself at this point; fucked knees, fucked back, fucked neck, everything that can be shattered or crushed or ruined has been, and that’s including what enthusiasm he had to start with.

He’s been held together by sheer force of will for too long, and it’s just… gone. There’s nothing left to string bone and muscle together, because hope and faith are things he’s never been good at, even when he had a future. Now, the future narrows to a point, and the light at the end of the tunnel winked out years ago, but for some reason, he’s still walking in that direction. Into the darkness. After all, it’s what he’s used to.

The worst part about talking to all those fucking cunts who decided to cheer for him halfway through the fucking match is seeing heads nod, hearing the applause rise, feeling them agree with everything he says, everything that should have been obvious for so long – what the fuck took them so long? Why does he have to spell everything out before someone even tries to see shit from his perspective? Everything that’s happened in Progress has happened because of him, and he feels like it’s time he went full circle, went back to briefly being the fan favourite before taking his anger out on Jim and fucking off, one last farewell middle finger to everyone who considers him part of the old guard, part of something whose time is over, part of a dying slice of the industry that isn’t needed anymore. He’s been the driving force behind everything these cunts have cheered and booed and lost their fucking minds over, and yet his fucking merch queue is a couple of fucking weird people who want to talk bollocks at him, and fuck all else. He’s tired of being performatively wrecked for the few who won’t leave him the fuck alone. He’s tired of being an afterthought when it comes to booking. More than anything – he’s just fucking tired.

Every morning he gets to wake up and hurt, wonder which pain will be the worst today, wonder which part of him is going to spend the day stabbing at him, and he knows how tempting the painkillers are. Which is why he won’t take them. Hot water, ice packs, a decent mattress, and pain-induced insomnia is his world, late nights in hotel rooms and trying to drink enough that sleep follows, rather than staring up at the ceiling and wondering if there’s any way he can make the pain stop without removing a fucking limb. He knows he’s a bundle of shit coping mechanisms, because no matter what anyone says, he’s far from fucking stupid, but no one’s got any advice for how to make this pain shut the fuck up any other way.

When someone asks him how he doesn’t scream at everything inflicted on him in a match, he just looks at them, face blank. Existence is a fucking scream, moving to get a fucking cup of tea is a scream, limping to the fucking bar is a scream; he never stops fucking screaming unless he’s in the ring and that pain can be focused on exactly what’s happening to him. When the pain has to be physical, because it’s happening, because it’s being witnessed, and isn’t a deep ache that never goes away until he’s five beers in – and truthfully, not even then.

When Ospreay saunters out to cries of excitement – don’t these cunts check fucking Twitter, he said he was in the fucking country – he’s so close to being done. Ospreay used to get his back up like no one else, but he’s so tired, he’s so fucking sore, and he knows he’ll be paying for this even more tomorrow. He stays sat down; he’ll get up when he sees something worth standing for. It’s almost too much effort to listen to the little cunt, but when he gets in his face, when he makes a fucking point of saying he’s become ‘James’ now… that’s more than an insult. That’s the little prick taunting him, denying everything he’s ever been and is, and as tired as Jimmy is, as much as everything hurts… he’s not taking that. The dickhead wants Jimmy Fucking Havoc, at Wembley? Then he’ll fucking get it, even if he regrets it later, even if he begs and wishes that he hadn’t had that, even if he screams for fucking mercy. He’ll get Jimmy Fucking Havoc.

Even if he’s the last person who ever does.


End file.
